Romania ranks 42nd in the PwC Paying Taxes 2018 global index

Romania climbed 8 ranks, up to the 42nd place in the PwC Paying Taxes 2018 global index, which measures the ease of paying taxes for a typical company in 190 countries around the world, business-review.eu reads.

“This is the best ranking of Romania since PwC started measuring the Paying Taxes index, which highlights the progress made by Romania in recent years, by facilitating the online tax payments and by decreasing the total tax burden. Basically, Romania has now become the best ranked country in Central and Eastern Europe in the Paying Taxes index, if we exclude the Baltic countries, that are world leaders in terms of ease of paying taxes,” said Mihaela Mitroi, Tax and Legal Services leader, PwC Romania.

“The Paying Taxes index, which is part of the Doing Business report published every year by the World Bank, is one of the most watched indicators by the investors when they are assessing their global investment strategy. As such, we should consider this position attained by Romania in this year’s Paying Taxes report as a competitive asset of our country in the effort to attract and retain investments, and we should strive to maintain and even improve this ranking” added Mitroi.

The 2018 ranking of the Paying Taxes is based on the analysis of the tax indicators valid for the year 2016.

Romania’s performance is even more commendable, when compared with the situation of other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, which registered a decrease in the Paying Taxes ranking, mostly due to an increase in tax rates. As such, Croatia fell from the 49th place to the 95th, Hungary decreased from 77th to 93rd, Bulgaria from 83rd to 90th, while Poland decreased from 47th to 51st.

The total tax rate, which measures the share of taxes and contributions paid by a firm as a percentage of profit, was of 38.4 percent in Romania in this year’s edition, below the EU average (39.6 percent) and the global one (40.5 percent).

Taking into consideration the number of hours necessary to comply with the tax legislation, Romania is one of the best performing states in CEE, with 163 hours per year, compared with an EU average of 161 hours and a global average of 240 hours.

Paying Taxes 2018 measures all mandatory taxes and contributions that a medium-size company must pay in a given year. Taxes and contributions measured include the profit or corporate income tax, social contributions and labour taxes paid by the employer, property taxes, property transfer taxes, dividend tax, capital gains tax, financial transactions tax, waste collection taxes, vehicle and road taxes, and other small taxes or fees.